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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

#50: Medievil: When Being Goth Meant Something Completely Different

(You
probably don't care, but there are spoilers for Medievil, an old PS1
game. I guess you've been warned.)

A few
weeks back, I went ahead and purchased PlayStation
All-Stars: Battle Royale. I am still having a great time playing
the game and reconnecting with old characters from games past. One of
the characters in that game was my good old friend Sir
Daniel Fortesque from the Medievil
franchise. As a child, I adored these games and loved playing them.
It got to a point to where I was able to play through the original
Medievil from start to finish in a four-hour long play session.
Anyway, seeing Sir Dan make a return made gave me the excuse to go
back and replay the two games in this old franchise. While they still
hold up relatively well to the test of time, they also serve to
demonstrate the necessity of many of the conventions that became
popular in both this console generation and the last. I think this
retrospective will serve as a good lesson for both gamers and
developers.

First
off, what is Medievil? Medievil is a old Gothic-themed platformer
released for the original PlayStation in 1998. It takes place in the
fictional kingdom of Gallowmere in the late 14th century.
The actual story begins in the century prior. In the year 1286,
Gallowmere was in the midst of an era of peace and its citizens were
quite prosperous. During this period, the court wizard Zarok was
caught doing heinous experiments in resurrecting the undead and was
sentenced to exile. As vengeful as he was, Zarok began to wage war
upon Gallowmere, summoning an army of shadow demons to begin the
onslaught. The King of the nation responded by sending his army to
fight the sorcerer head on, led by Sir Daniel Fortesque, who received
his title by spinning interesting stories for the King to hear (it
was an honorary position as no one seriously expected to go to war).
Sir Dan ran head on into enemy forces... and died in the first wave
by being shot in eye with an arrow. The army fought on without him
and Zarok's body was never found. Knowing the truth would cause
unrest with the people, King Peregrin altered the history books to
give Dan the title of Hero of Gallowmere for dying valiantly after
slaughtering Zarok. Peace returned for 100 years, until Zarok was
finished nursing his hatred and began his revenge. He successfully
cast a very powerful spell, cursing the land to Eternal Night,
robbing the townsfolk of their free will, and resurrecting the undead
for his new army. Unfortunately for him, his spell brought old Sir
Dan back from the dead as well. Hoping to redeem himself of his past
mistakes, Daniel takes this chance to save the land of Gallowmere
from Zarok for true and become the hero in undeath that he could
never be in life, finally taking his place in the Hall of Heroes,
where dead heroes gather to boast, feast, and arm wrestle for all
eternity.

As the
description above might show, this is a game that is equal parts
horror and humor, and it uses both to great effect. Playing this game
in my childhood, many of the enemies in the game, from the Stained
Glass Demon trapped in the Hilltop Mausoleum to the Shadow Demons in
the Enchanted Earth, and even minor enemies like the scarecrows in
the aptly named Scarecrow Fields filled me with a mixture of dread
and excitement. Seeing a monster formed of stained glass be released
from his prison to terrorize me was horrifying in a compelling sense.
It is a hard feeling to explain as it has been so long since I felt
that way. As an young replaying the game for the first time in years,
it is only now how funny that game was. Medievil has humor on both a
small and large scale. Small little gestures like Sir Dan removing
cobwebs from his empty eye-hole when waking up are very good moments.
Other larger, repeating gags are the constant mockery of our would-be
hero. Throughout the game, players can visit the Hall of Heroes to
pay homage to the heroes there and earn rewards. Nearly all of them
bear a grudge against Fortesque and/or mock him constantly, saying
the they do not think he can succeed and will likely not be the hero.
The gargoyles scattered around, who serve as the tip dispensers for
the game, also constantly chastise Daniel. The other recurring gag is
Sir Dan's missing jaw, which fell off in the 100 year time span since
his death. This is repeatedly acknowledged and lampshaded throughout
the whole game, and Daniel speaks in mumblings with subtitles helping
the playing understand him.

The game
also had very interesting and varied level designs. Despite taking
place in a decidedly Medievil (pun intended) setting, they used more
than the usual fare when designing the game. The game has many
different levels including a graveyard, a mausoleum, an enchanted
forest, an hedge maze, a cursed medieval village, an insane asylum,
and flooded battlefield, a pumpkin patch, and a pirate ship. These
areas are more varied than in just their backdrops. Each area also
tends to emphasize one of Medievil's three different styles of play:
Puzzles, Platforming, and Combat (much like other 3D platforming
games of the time). For example, in the hedge maze level, the theme
of that level is puzzle solving. The maze is ruled by a unique
gargoyle named Jack of the Green. He will only allow the player to
exit when they answer four of his riddles by searching the maze for
the answers. While he thinks his riddles are so clever that no one
can solve them, the game acknowledges that they are not hard at all
and lampshades it quite effectively. The challenge comes not from
answering the riddles, but from discovering what task the player has
to perform to complete the riddle through Jack's growing irritation.
It is pretty intuitive though, so most players will not have trouble.
This puzzle heavy level leads to the asylum, which is a combat heavy
level in the form of a gauntlet where players have to kill all the
enemies in a room before proceeding. Lastly, there are platforming
levels like the pirate ship, where the emphasis is on timed jumps and
making it from the beginning to the end of the level. Each level is
well planned to fit its theme, giving players much appreciated
variety.

All of
these levels have one thing in common, though. In every stage, there
exists a Chalice of Souls from the Hall of Heroes. While defeating
Zarok is certainly the primary goal of the game, the secondary goal
for Sir Daniel is to prove himself capable of being a hero. To this
end, the champions of the Hall of Heroes have issued a challenge: To
gain standing in the Hall and prove his worth, Dan must collect the
complete set of Chalices and then defeat Zarok. While every level
contains one of these Chalices, Fortesque cannot simply collect them.
They are powered by the energy contained within malicious souls. In
order to materialize the Chalice of a given level, it is necessary to
dispatch enough enemies to fill the Chalice to 100% capacity. Once
that happens, the Chalice can be collected. There are also stages
where the Chalice starts off partially filled. This is both a
blessing and a curse. While it means that players have a kill fewer
enemies, it also means that there are innocent souls in the stage.
Should an innocent person die on Dan's watch, their energy will
reduce the level at which the Chalice is filled. This can make it
impossible to collect the Chalice in most cases. Again, this makes
sense because Dan is trying to prove his worth as a hero, so letting
people die is directly opposed to that. Completing a stage with
Chalice in hand grants the player an aforementioned trip to the Hall
of Heroes, where they can pay homage to one of the great warriors of
the past. While few respect Fortesque and fewer still among the
greats in the hall even like him, they all will offer him aid on his
quest. This aid can come in the form of money, health, a Life Bottle
(which can be use as an extra life), or most likely a new weapon
which can make the player's life easier going forward. Also, the good
ending where Daniel ascends to the Hall of Heroes can only be
obtained by completing the game with every Chalice in hand. I liked
this whole system of collecting the Chalices and still do because it
encourages players to stand their ground and fight all of the enemies
in a level instead of rushing to complete the game, which is entirely
possible in most levels.

As much
as I loved this old game though, it has a problem: A major problem.
As with many platformers of the era, the camera practically conspires
to kill the player at every turn. Replaying the game from my modern
perspective, there were more than a few instances where the
platforming of the game was made unnecessarily difficult by the
camera putting itself in odd positions that made it difficult to
perceive distance between Sir Dan and the platform he needs to jump
to. The combat is also worsened by the camera's tendency to move
around mid-fight and force players to adapt to a new perspective
while enemies are beating on them. This different perspective often
reoriented the directional controls, which further complicates what
should be a simple confrontation. Also, the game was created before
Ape Escape on the original PlayStation made dual analog sticks
standard for most control schemes, so the camera was awkwardly
controlled by the shoulder buttons and it does not work quite as well
as the “left stick controls movement, right stick controls camera”
style most games utilize today. This lack of dual sticks also makes
platforming itself unnecessarily difficult. The directional buttons
do not allow for the same level of precision that analog sticks can
provide, so certain jumps are made harder because of technological
limitations. This is even more painful since Medievil comes from the
era where all game protagonists were completely unable to swim in
water and drowned instantly, even if it makes more sense for this to
affect a skeletal knight in heavy armor. I am willing to forgive it
for these issues, often brought on by growing pains and worsened by
the camera, simply because 3D platforming was still just starting to
take off at the time. Your enjoyment of this is largely, but not
entirely, dependent on your willingness to forgive the rather archaic
(by modern standards) control scheme. The rest of the game has aged
rather well by comparison.

Medievil
was a great game and a fantastic case study for the use of Gothic
architecture and themes in video games, combined with a healthy sense
of humor. Few games since then have re-imagined this period of
history in the same way. Luckily for everyone in North American (and
I think Europe), the game is available for download and use on the
PSN store for the PS3 and the PSP. It only costs around $6, so it may
be worth trying out (and the PC crowd among you could probably just
pirate it and use a PS1 emulator). Next week, I intend to go over the
sequel*, as it has a list of pros and cons that are related, but
altogether different from the original. This is a series I adore and
Sir Daniel is one of my favorite protagonists in video games. I hope
that one day it can see a another sequel, taking the elements that
made the first one and its sequel so great, but re-imagining them
using conventions and systems brought on my developments in modern
game design. While still not as well known as other PS1 games,
Medievil still has a huge cult following and it would be worth
revisiting.